Wife of Bangladesh Policeman Who Went After Islamist Militants Is Killed

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Three attackers fatally shot and stabbed the wife of a police superintendent in southern Bangladesh on Sunday morning.Published OnJune 5, 2016CreditImage by European Pressphoto Agency

By Julfikar Ali Manik and Nida Najar

June 5, 2016

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Three attackers fatally shot and stabbed the wife of a police superintendent in southern Bangladesh on Sunday morning, the police said, the latest in a series of killings in which Islamist militants are the primary suspects.

The woman, Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, 30, and her young son were walking through a narrow lane near their home in Chittagong on the way to a school bus stop when three men arriving on a motorcycle stabbed her and shot her in the head, said Mohiuddin Mahmood, the officer in charge of the Panchlaish police station in Chittagong. The son was unhurt.

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A relative consoling the children of Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, who was killed in an attack in Chittagong, Bangladesh, on Sunday.CreditEuropean Pressphoto Agency

“We found nine wounds of stabbing on her back and belly,” Mr. Mahmood said.

Her husband, Babul Akter, a police officer with a record of going after Islamist militants, was recently promoted to superintendent. In December, Superintendent Akter led a raid on an apartment on the outskirts of the city that the police said belonged to the banned group Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh, according to the local news media.

For the past two years, activists, religious minorities, intellectuals and secularist writers, among others, have been targeted for death in Bangladesh, and the deaths appear to have accelerated in recent weeks.

The Islamic State has claimed some of the killings on social media accounts linked to it, and others have been claimed by a faction of Al Qaeda. The authorities in Bangladesh have denied the presence of foreign militants in the country.

Also on Sunday, a Christian man, Sunil Gomez, 60, was hacked to death in his grocery store in the Natore district in northern Bangladesh, in a style similar to recent attacks, said Moniruzzaman, subinspector of the Boraigram police station in Natore, who goes by one name.

The Amaq News Agency of the Islamic State claimed the killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. But Mr. Moniruzzaman said it was too soon to name suspects.

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Nida Najar from New Delhi.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Militants Suspected in Killing of Bangladeshi Officer’s Wife. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe